


Sting So Terribly

by pearl_o



Category: due South
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-23
Updated: 2006-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many ways to kill a man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sting So Terribly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the ds_flashfiction "Weaponry" challenge.

This is one way to kill a man: a clean shot, to the skull or the heart. Sometimes a shot to the gut will work, but that way is messy, and slow.

A thrown knife can kill easily. Proper preperation prevents poor performance, and with enough practice a very high degree of accuracy can be achieved. A knife, clean and well-sharpened, small enough to keep in your boot, is an invaluable resource, especially in the wild, where it can be a hunting and camping tool as well as a weapon.

Most men underestimate the power of wild animals. Perhaps it is life in the city, in the midst of the constant encroach of civilization. People assume that human beings are smarter and quicker than anything they might come across, and only learn otherwise to their peril.

Diefenbaker never has killed a man, of course, but that is not because he _couldn't_. It is because Dief is a moral being.

If men underestimate the danger of wildlife, they underestimate the dangers of nature itself even more. It's impossible to explain to someone who's grown up in the safety of a bright and contained city such as Chicago the peril of each and every day in the Arctic. A man like Ray or Ray will nod his head and humor you, but he won't truly conceive of it, not until he sees it for himself.

You have almost died, frozen in a blizzard. You have come close to drowning, in dark and icy and endless water. You've been trapped in an ice crevasse, with no logical hope of rescue. You've stood in the middle of nowhere, with no idea how to regain your bearings, no clues to where you might be and which way to go.

Nothing kills a man so sourly as disloyal friends. Your parents both died of gunshot wounds from people they once trusted: dishonesty, treachery, petty evil in its most ignoble form.

This is how you kill your best friend: you watch him disintegrate, before your eyes. You do everything you can to save him. You love him, and you talk to him, but he does not respond anymore. He is a danger to you, he is a danger to himself, he is a danger to all around him. And when he escapes you have no choices left, no way left to save him, and you take out your rifle, run your hands slowly over it, resisting what you need to do. And when you see him-- and you ready your shot-- and if no deus ex machina falls from the skies to rescue you both, you know you will pull the trigger.

Sometimes death is a mercy. Your grandmother died slowly in a hospital, life leeched out of her day by painful day. Your grandfather spit on the ground by her grave and made you promise you'd take him before the butchers could get to him, when his time came; you were seventeen and gave him your oath, but three years later a massive stroke took him, almost instantly, and part of you shamefully relieved to be excused from your promise.

This is the slowest way you know to kill a man, but that makes it no less effective: you take him when he's young, and you put him away, all alone, away from companionship, light, love. People are like plants; they need food to thrive, and left to themselves they do nothing but stunt, curl up on themselves and wither away.

You know any number of ways to kill: you know the procedures, the proper weapons, how it works. This is the secret, perhaps: it's easy to kill, easy to die. Life is much more difficult, difficult and painful, just like all things you know to be worth doing.


End file.
